CastIronFace

Here is my hacked together system. I built 4 bi-quad antennas for band 2 mounted to a large ground plane covered in copper foil tape. The goop is high temperature hot glue used just to reinforce the antennas. On the flip side is a WG3526 and a POE af/at splitter. All that is mounted in a large LTEFix enclosure. I built some rudimentary standoffs on the 3D printer that insulates the router and provides mounting points for all the antennas. I disabled the WiFi to try and save a few precious milliamps.

Any ideas why I cant get connected using my T-Mobile home internet sim? I did manage to get the IMEI changed between boots. I also tried setting the interface to 464xlat protocol since the T-Mobile askey router labels the connection type "LTE - Connected (464 XLAT)".

Four SMA Female of any length, but even better would be MHF4 > N Male, that would be one less adapter. I am tearing down the antenna and moving the N Female bulkhead jacks to the inside of the case. At least I found a copper interlink that had a cold solder joint

After seeing this comment, I tried a couple of things and viola, it works. Unfortunately I still wasn't successful connecting to the network. It was a bit tricky with the pi because it has a hard time initializing the modem after a reboot if I don't cycle the power on the modem too, of course that's resetting the IMEI. Working quickly I was able to get it all synced up, but still kept getting the Call failed/Out of Call errors in the logs. If it would have worked I would have worked harder to figure out a way to pass the AT command prior to bringing up the network. I did verify the IMEI with AT commands and uqmi as well. I have all the connections I need, but I am unable to find the thicker 1.13mm coax pigtails. LTEfix doesn't seem to have them either I ordered a ZBT WG3526 since it seems pretty well supported, and based on your comments I am going to get a beefier power supply for it as well. On a separate note: I figured out a couple of things about the Askey router, not that it matters much those little MHF4 looking connectors on the antenna traces look like test points. When you use the proper cable it acts like a switch and disables the antenna while taking measurements. MHF-SW23 Also there is a serial port nearby the sim slot that is marked Tx, Rx, Gnd on the flip side of the board. I was able to watch the board boot by hooking up an arduino like a jerry-rigged ttl cable, no shell though. I saved the output if anyone cares.

I feel like I could have saved a lot of time if I had found this thread a while back. I started with a T-Mobile Home Internet setup and realized very quickly that i would get drastically faster speeds if the router was on my roof. Naturally I ripped it apart and tried external antennas on the four U.FL connections, no dice (I suspect it's the really small RP MHF4 style connectors, but I cant find the right connector for that). Next I got a Mofi4500 which doesnt work with the T-Mobile Home Internet sim (probably IMEI locked?) I used the Mofi with AT&T for a while reliably but not as fast as I would like (~4-10Mbps). I eventually decided to build my own based on a EM20-G and a Raspberry Pi using GoldenOrb. After downgrading the firmware I was able to get it working in a LTEFix USB enclosure. I also tried it out in the Mofi with GoldenOrb (it seemed to work till a bandwidth test and it would reset the modem). I am suspecting it wasn't getting enough power since it only seemed to work in the external enclosure when the optional power was hooked up. I settled on the EM20-G because I read all over the place that swapping the IMEI would be as easy as an AT command, which didn't work out but I figured would allow me to use the T-Mobile sim. I am using the super big 4x4 MIMO panel from LTEFix and all the various configurations are running about equal. That is MoFi up on the roof with the tiny omnis or bigger cheap omnis, small cheap yagis, or the LTEFix panel, same with the EM20-G, and finally the T-Mobile Askey router by itself. The only two variables I can think of is T-Mobile vs. AT&T or the MHF4 -> SMA pigtails from Amazon that seem really thin (like ~ .8mm). In a perfect world I could test the T-Mobile with the EM20-G and the LTEFix antenna. Even better I would like to mount a router board inside the LTEFix antenna enclosure as there is 2.5cm clearance, even better than that would be POE. I am mainly concerned with power delivery to the EM20-G. Do you have any recommendations for a good router board that would work with it, I don't really care about WiFi? Sorry for the long winded post :)